Country’s only western gold miner, Canada’s Besra Gold Inc. has overcome obstacles ranging from power shortages to changes in tax laws to increase output every year since it started operations in 2005.

Uncertainties continued to hit Vietnam’s gold markets but gold mining remained unaffected by official clampdowns.
Country’s only western gold miner, Canada’s Besra Gold Inc. has overcome obstacles ranging from power shortages to changes in tax laws to increase output every year since it started operations in 2005.
Almost three decades after Vietnam first opened its economy to foreign investment, the Southeast Asian nation doesn’t appear on any rankings of global gold producers.
In that time, China has grown to become the world’s biggest gold-producing nation, Indonesia is in the top 10, and foreign companies are operating mines in Laos, Thailand and the Philippines.
Toronto-based Besra’s gold production will probably reach 65,000 ounces this year and 75,000 ounces in 2013, the company estimates.
By comparison, in Thailand, Australia’s Kingsgate Consolidated Ltd. said in August it is targeting fiscal 2013 production of 120,000 to 130,000 ounces from the Chatree gold mine.
Besra in 2010 said it delayed plans to invest $100 million in Vietnam because of the implementation of a tax on unrefined gold. Besra said it’s the only Western miner extracting minerals in Vietnam, and has the first two foreign owned gold mines to be operated in the country since the 1940s.
Analysts said though Vietnam didn’t intervene in gold mining for the moment, the South East Asian nation introduced increased limits on gold trading and significantly reduced the number of licensed refiners officially allowed to produce gold bars.
From November 2011 forward all companies wishing to continue their operations had to hold a minimum of 500 billion dong in funds and a market share of 25%. Thus, smaller refiners and now dealers are going out of business.
The government has thrown much of the gold trading onto the “black market” or the free market or whatever you’d like to call the underground economy.
On it, gold prices have increased in relation to the gold fix and the value of the dong. About a year ago, Vietnamese banks raised the interest on gold deposits, evidencing that the central bank wishes to control gold throughout the country.